I prepared a tasting earlier in the week for Gary Lincoffâ€™s lecture on mushrooms at the American Museum of Natural History: Marinated Maitake with Scallops, Chicken Canzanese with Morels, and Cheesecake Bars with Candy Cap Syrup (recipes below). I also spoke a bit about cooking mushrooms and the kooky mushroom hunting culture, but I realize now that the audience would have benefited more had I offered up basic generalizations. (Ah, the curse of hindsight!) So in an attempt to redeem myself, hereâ€™s what I know about cooking mushrooms.

Cultivated enoki

There are two categories out there: wild and cultivated. New cultivars are on the market that you used to only find in the wild, like maitake (hen of the woods) and royal trumpets, as are mushrooms long cultivated in the Far East, like wood ear and enoki, and more wild varieties are showing up in specialty stores, like blewets and black trumpets. In general wild mushrooms are more intensely flavored, benefiting as they probably do from their soil and bacterial symbionts, but the cultivated varieties are excellent, too.

Cultivated maitake

When buying mushrooms, either wild or cultivated, look for moist firm specimens that have a nice strong smell. In this sense, buying mushrooms is much like buying fruit: if it doesnâ€™t smell like anything, it wonâ€™t taste like anything either. Mushrooms are mostly water, and depending on the species you could lose up to 70% of the volume of fresh mushrooms once they are cooked, so keep that in mind when purchasing. Donâ€™t wash any mushroom until you are ready to cook or preserve them. Best to place them in a paper bag in the fridge, where they will hold for a few days before drying out.

Wild porcini

Prior to preparing mushrooms, wash the wild ones to remove the bits of pine needles and other forest debris, and if you have morels, soak them in warm salted water, and swish them around some as sand and grit will likely have accumulated in the many crevices and folds of the cap. Cultivated mushrooms donâ€™t have to be washed: just cut off the bit of stem that has remnants of the substrate from which they grew. This is okay because any bacteria on them will die from the heat of cooking.

Wild chanterelles

So how to cook different mushrooms? The mushroom flavor is called umami. It’s one of the basic tastes (like sweet, sour, salty) and refers to their meaty savoriness. (Monosodium glutamate actually imitates the umami flavor.) So by extension, mushrooms are wonderful cooked with proteins, but may be lost cooked with vegetables, except for the savories, like onions and garlic. Mushrooms are great cooked in butter or oil, and go well with herbs, especially thyme and parsley. And many are delicious cooked with booze like wine, cognac, and dry Marsala. (Should you ever find youâ€™ve drowned your mushrooms in too much wine, try adding butter. It helps modify the sourness.)

Cultivated beech, pioppini, and royal trumpets, with onion wedges , garlic, thyme, and olive oil, ready to roast in a hot oven

When you cook a mushroom it will release a lot of water. But that water is delicious. You can cook the mushroom until its water evaporates, or even cook until they are dry and caramelized to make a duxelles, but I often use the mushroom water to make a sauce, or save it to add mushroomy flavor to something another day (it freezes well).

Sauteed porcini

Clean stems that you donâ€™t use, like those of maitake,Â shiitake, and Portobello, and make a stock with them. You can strain the stock and hold it in your fridge for a few days (and bring it to a boil every 3 or 4 days to sterilize and keep longer, though you will lose some volume) or freeze.

Donâ€™t eat mushrooms rawâ€”theyâ€™re hard to digest because their cell walls are made of chitin, the same stuff as shrimp shells. When you heat up chitin, however, it breaks down and is digestible. Raw wild mushrooms may also give you microscopic worms. And some mushrooms, like morels, should never be eaten raw or they will make you sick. If you do eat raw mushrooms then limit the amount.

Many mushrooms dry well, like morels, which can be rehydrated in water or cream, and porcini, which you can slice and dry in a dehydrator and then bag, or grind into a porcini powder (to combine with salt to make porcini salt, or butter to make porcini butter, or use as a rub for meat).

You can preserve mushrooms for shelf stability two ways: as pickles that you water bath can, or pressure can. Mushrooms are a low acid food prone to spoilage, including the bacteria that causes botulism. They cannot be safely canned in a water bath without added acid. (Some cultures salt mushrooms, though I havenâ€™t tried it yet.) The only USDA approved recipe for pickling mushrooms that I am aware of calls for so much vinegar that I think the taste of the mushrooms get lost, so I recommend marinated refrigerator mushroom pickles as a better, though not as long term, solution. You can pressure can mushrooms, but again, the USDA recipe source is limited. There are only recipes for white button mushrooms. I have pressure-canned morels using the USDA recipe for white buttons, but canâ€™t tell you that it is 100% safe, since it hasnâ€™t been tested in a lab. However, should you ever be nervous about any product youâ€™ve canned at home, you can always bring it to a boil for ten minutes before serving. That will kill any spoilers in the product, included the bacteria that cause botulism.

The mushrooms I used for the tasting were from dartagnan.com (maitake and morels), and Farwestfungi.com (the candy caps). Both are great mail order resources.

Marinated Maitake
Makes about 3 pints

Maitake, also known as Hen of the Woods, are now being cultivated. They make a wonderful marinated mushroom. You can also make this dish with a combination of cultivated mushrooms, like shitake, oyster, royal trumpet, and enoki, as well as the Agaricus mushrooms: the white button, crimini, and portabello. Any egg dish is improved with the addition of marinated mushrooms: cook them in omelets, frittatas, quiche, and savory ricotta pies. They are great with a grilled cheese sandwich, or combined with broiled shellfish.

Preheat the over to 400 degrees. Place the maitake on a cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Throw two sprigs of thyme on top of the mushrooms and bake until tender, about 10 minutes.

In a large bowl add the mushrooms and the remaining ingredients. Taste the mushroomsâ€”if you like it a bit tarter, add more lemon juice. If it seems dry, add a dribble of olive oil. Stir to combine, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 24 hours.

Have ready three sterilized pint jars, bands and lids (to sterilize, place the jars, lids and bands in a pot of water and boil for 10 minutes). Spoon the mushrooms into the sterilized pint jars. The mushrooms will hold in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Check the scallops and remove the abductor muscle (it is a small, lightly darker bit of scallop meat on the side that pulls off easily). Heat the butter in a nonstick pan over a medium high heat. Add the scallops, and sprinkle with salt. Cook for a few minutes on each side, until just golden. If the scallops begin to crack you are overcooking them so take them off the heat.

Place a couple of tablespoons of marinated maitake on a plate and add the scallops. Garnish with a grind of black pepper.

Braised Chicken Thighs with Dried Morels
Serves 6

The chicken thighs are not fussed with much: the ingredients are added and then allowed to cook unmolested. It is okay to use skinless thighs, but thighs with the skin on will produce a more succulent dish, and the skin crisps nicely.

Place the thighs in a large well-seasoned cast iron skillet or Dutch oven. (You can use a non-stick pan, but the skin of the chicken wonâ€™t brown as well.) Scatter all of the ingredientsÂ over the chicken. Cover and cook over a medium-to-medium low heat for Â˝ hour, until the chicken is mostly cooked through (the meat will be white and moist when probed with a fork). Do not be tempted to turn over the thighs until the skin separates easily from the pan.

The sauce will be golden at its peak. Overcooking will cook off the sauce and leave oil, which is very tasty, but can be resuscitated by adding a bit more stock, white wine, or water. Likewise, if the pan gets dry before the chicken is cooked through, add a bit of white wine, water, or chicken stock.

Serve immediately, or at room temperature.

Note: You can strain the soaking liquid and use that in place of the water in the dish. It wil just add more flavor!Cheesecake Bars with Candy Cap Mushroom Sauce
Makes 12 bars

This dessert sauce is wonderful over any eggy or custardy dessert. It is also wonderful with baked apples, vanilla ice cream, and good quality ricotta cheese. You can substitute a graham cracker crust for the shortbread crust in this recipe, and you can substitute part of the cream cheese with goat cheese if you like.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the butter and sugar. Beat until creamy. Add flour and beat until thoroughly combined.

Press the crust into the bottom of a 13X9 inch ungreased baking pan. Place in the oven and bake for 12 minutes until the edges are golden brown. Watch carefully, as the crust can overcook suddenly. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Meanwhile, combine the cream cheese, sugar and cornstarch in a large bowl and beat until creamy. Add the eggs and continue beating until well mixed.

Pour the cream cheese mixture over the crust and return to the oven. Bake about 20 minutes, until the custard has set. Watch carefully: the custard can overcook easily. Allow to cool completely. You can refrigerate the bars if you like.

In the meantime, prepare the candy cap dessert sauce. Remove the mushrooms and strain the soaking liquid through a fine strainer.Â Pour the candy cap soaking liquid and the mushrooms into a small heavy bottomed pot. Add sugar. Bring the syrup to a low boil over a medium low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, until the sauce tastes sweet and the syrup is reduced by half. You may have to boil the syrup for as long as 20 minutesâ€”the mushrooms will become sweeter over time. Taste the sauce and see if you need more sugar.

To serve, place a room temperature cheesecake bar on a dessert plate and spoon about a tablespoon of candy cap mushrooms and sauce over the top.

I completely enjoyed your talk( and Gary’s). Thanks for the additional info.The tastings were great and I am so glad to have the recipes. I plan to make the morel chicken soon. Actually I’m going to do them all they were so good. I have already checked out my local Mushroom Club and their next outing. By the way the six lb cauliflower is 14 pints of pickles now !

Eugenia Bone

Susan, you wild thing! We’ll have to think up more recipes for you to use up all those pickles. Thanks for coming, and your kind words, It was a pleasure to meet you.

Susan Quinby

I completely enjoyed your talk( and Gary’s). Thanks for the additional info.The tastings were great and I am so glad to have the recipes. I plan to make the morel chicken soon. Actually I’m going to do them all they were so good. I have already checked out my local Mushroom Club and their next outing. By the way the six lb cauliflower is 14 pints of pickles now !

Eugenia Bone

Susan, you wild thing! We’ll have to think up more recipes for you to use up all those pickles. Thanks for coming, and your kind words, It was a pleasure to meet you.

Eugenia Bone, a veteran food writer who has published in many national magazines and newspapers, is also a cookbook author. She is the author of Well-Preserved (Clarkson Potter 2009). She has contributed to many cookbooks and a few literary journals, been nominated for a variety of food writing awards and participated in radio, interactive and online interviews, in addition to appearing multiple times on television. She lives in New York City and Crawford, Colo.

The secret to tasty food is homemade and seasonal. To do that, you've got to put up food. Well-Preserved reports on small batch preservation year round, and generates recipes from those preserved foods.